Israel and Humanity - Ethnicity and local Mosaic tradition

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III.

Ethnicity and Local Mosaism.

The ethnic and local Obviously Mosaic. It contains laws that depend on climate, geography of Palestine. ore by the promiseSpring, for example, determined that the setting of the Passover is one of this country. It could not be otherwise, because it was not to remain open to everyone to settle for a celebration of the feast, the specific conditions of his place of residence, which is contrary to the supreme law raised by Moses, uniformity in worship: "There will be one law for you and for the stranger who dwells among you [1]". Will it be said that although the time of Easter was settled by the spring of Palestine, we can not call this local institution, when it is obligatory wherever there is? But it proves even more than the Mosaic worship, [2] wherever it is observed, depends on a particular place only.

We will not go into details of the many statements that are only attached to the land of Palestine. He has only to open the Talmud and later rabbinical writings to find the detailed comment. But more or less formal statement of Moses himself is conclusive proof that we can not ignore. The gods of the Gentiles, false gods are called by the Hebrew lawgiver of the Gods foreign country "and we have only see Ibn Ezra and Nachmanides to convince the meaning of those words. That means the promise so often repeated that God would set his house in the Holy Land, in the midst of Israel, what sanctity attributed to the soil of Palestine and the cult that few professed for him and that death same could not destroy, since aspired to be buried, if not the conviction that the religion of Israel had done for Israel and Jerusalem and Jerusalem and Israel were made to this religion? The doctors have even said in the Midrash that the performance of the various precepts of the Torah is in exile, a commemoration of the past state a representation of the future a way not to unlearn obedience to God's commandments and be on the day appointed by God, to resume the old practice. And after these exaggerations of true doctrine itself, as we have said also about the idea of God locally and nationally, who would dare argue that the religious ideal dream for the Gentiles could be Israel in the submission of non-Jews to the same Act , a law that the confession of its observers, loses, we will not say his rights, but at least its full effectiveness outside the borders of Palestine?

But here is a fact no less remarkable. We do not pretend, after everything we said above, that the advent of the Mosaic has resulted in no rejection of the rest of the human race and that Divine Providence does not continue as before to cover all the peoples of the earth. If so and if, on the other hand, there is no other way of salvation open to Gentiles that the Mosaic law, what should we see in Judaism? Certainly a tendency to proselytize much sharper than previously, we do not just mean that preaches peaceful proselytism even more by the promise [3] night and still more by example than by the word, but an ardent proselytizing and conqueror who never tires of proclaiming that eternal damnation awaits those who do not convert to the true religion. But instead we see a striking contrast. Israel observes, in respect of the Gentile, a reservation incompatible with the belief that he alone possessed the means of salvation. His respect for other beliefs is that it appears confined to the indifference and superficial that judges did not fail to conclude that Judaism knew no proselytizing, it has none of these instincts that push a religion to spread abroad, to gain followers, to swell the ranks in a word of his followers. In fact the rabbis have spoken about converts and proselytizing in general words so bleak that it is wonderful thing and if the name itself remained in Israel in honor.

This ethnic, local, and that the Mosaic almost complete absence of proselytism organized enough to prove that the religion of Israel is not destined to become the universal religion. When we see, however, some general principles proclaimed as binding as any human being or a law which can not escape with impunity and whose execution is required by divine justice, can anyone doubt that if she aspires to point convert to any rites of mankind, it recognizes at least in possession of a universal religion far more than could ever be that of Moses, a religion whose main lines are already in its ECRI-tures? Can anyone deny that this is precisely the aspect of the Act, one that regards all men and all time?

We need to study this more carefully as particularly instructive attitude of Jews to the Gentiles.


References

  1. Numbers, XV, 16
  2. Page 462
  3. Page 463